


Respite

by Marta



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Torture, Vignette, Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-23
Updated: 2011-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marta/pseuds/Marta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it. One of the Nazgul thinks on the choices circumstance has allowed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respite

Everyone avoided the tower. It was believed to have a poisoned air about it by the twisted elves and twisted men Sauron had bound to him. Even the beasts scurried away from Barad-dûr as soon as they could, and green things stubbornly refused to grow nearby. The bare rock had a festered look about it, and that wore on those bound by duty to make their lives in its shadow.

Khamûl had been glad to get away, truly glad. Strange to think of Dol Guldur as an escape! But it was.

He wondered, sometimes, what it might take for these free folk of the west to see him less as a warring captain and more as a refugee. He knew that the yet-free elves of these yet-free lands named his followers _orcs_ , as if they were something wholly different. Black-skinned, black-blooded, black-hearted: in many ways the very opposite of those who made war against them. Perhaps that thought let the Elvenking sleep easier, after he had done what needed doing in the defense of his people.

Khamûl knew different. He knew that the orcs were born fair-skinned, well-formed. He would have named them _beautiful_ in the days of youth, when such concepts still held sway. The youngest even smiled on occasion. He knew how his acid that tortured their skin into a fearful mask, and how his cruel machines twisted their limbs until they could hardly do more than hate. But that came later. Spiders were different; they were Ungoliant's brood through and through, and for them their evil nature was set from long before birth. But orcs?  Those first smiles grated against him, and when _he_ dreamed, it was of shining elf-eyes set in grotesque, half-scarred faces.

He needed warriors to hold the west at bay, and so he blackened their skins and their hearts as best he could. A part of him longed to keep their men from crawling over their women, to find some way of fighting the mindless drive to copulate that always took them come spring. But no; much though it pained him, he knew he needed their children to hold Dol Guldur. Without this toehold he would have no choice but to return to Mordor, and that fate seemed impossible. He reminded himself of that, year after year, as he raised more monsters to sacrifice to elvish arrows.

He knew, too, that the Elvenking's folk now called their home by a different name. That they blamed him for the need of that change. Khamûl did not blame them. Could he not remember a city that had once stood by the sea, the home of his youth, whose jade-studded buildings gleamed in the setting sun? He could well imagine how _Greenwood_ would seem a poor name for their once-fair home now that it had been tainted by the evil Sauron brought out of Mordor. And he understood, too, why they would loath the ones they blamed for their home's corruption. Why they must fight against him, even as Khamûl must grasp to Dol Guldur with all his strength.

As the years wore on and he breathed the freer air, he sometimes found himself wondering: might there be another way? Perhaps, or perhaps not. If there was a way out, he could hardly see it. Still, it had been long years since Khamûl had even thought to ask the question. That struck him as significant, somehow.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by Elrond's words to Boromir at the Council of Elrond: "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." If that's true, I like to imagine that those enthralled by Mordor might be capable of a sort of reawakening. Even if (circumstances being as they are) that reawakening never has much practical consequence. This does not absolve the baddies of responsibility; if anything, it makes them all the more culpable because there is some choice still to be made. Even so, that lost potential for turning-about has always struck me as a loss worth exploring.
> 
> On Khamûl: in Unfinished Tales we are told that "the Chieftain of the Ringwraiths dwelt in Minas Morgul with six companions, while the second to the Chief, Khamûl the Shadow of the East, abode in Dol Guldur as Sauron's lieutenant, with one other as his messenger."


End file.
